Couple Arrested, Charged For Starving 8-Year-Old Daughter To Death

How tragic! The California-born parents of an 8-year-old little girl are in custody after allegedly starving their daughter to death! The parents relocated to Qatar for work, where they were arrested on a charge of murder with intent.

California natives Matthew and Grace Huang were arrested in Qatar, accused of starving their 8-year-old daughter, Gloria, to death, according to a coalition of groups working on the case from the U.S. The parents were arrested shortly after Gloria’s January 15 death, associate director of the nonprofit California Innocence Project, Alex Simpson, said.

Matthew and Grace adopted their daughter from Ghana when she was four. Gloria was severely malnourished before the adoption, and as a result, she would periodically refuse food from her parents for days at a time, and then binge eat or get food out of the garbage, reports Mail Online. Gloria, who was small for her age, had also been treated for an intestinal parasite, and recent blood tests showed low levels of a type of white blood cells, a possible sign of an underlying bone marrow condition and vitamin D deficiency.

Gloria was suffering from an anorexic episode when she died on January 15. She had not eaten in as many as four days, and the Qatari doctor that conducted the young girl’s autopsy noted that the child’s hips, ribs, and spine protruded, reports Mail Online. The doctor concluded that Gloria’s cause of death was dehydration and wasting disease.

Huang Family Have Support in the United States

Matthew and Grace relocated their family from California to Qatar, and continue to have supporters in the U.S. These supporters say that the diagnoses aren’t possible, and more importantly, they don’t take Gloria’s history of malnutrition before she was adopted, which caused longterm health issues, into account.

Another concern is that the death and arrest occurred in Qatar, and the country officials are unfamiliar with international adoptions, Simpson, of the California Innocence Project, notes.

Grace and Matthew’s two other children, who were also adopted from Africa, are not allowed to leave the country and are being looked after by their grandmother in Qatar.